Luis Ayllón
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, is preparing a tour of South America, which will take him to Brazil and Chile from 6 to 8 March, according to The Diplomat, according to government sources.
Sánchez will thus return the visits that the presidents of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, and of Chile, Gabriel Boric, made to our country last year, and during which the harmony that the head of the Executive maintains with them was highlighted.
In his trip, which has not yet been officially confirmed, the President of the Government will be accompanied by a group of businessmen with interests in Brazil and Chile, two of the Ibero-American countries where the presence of large Spanish companies is very important.
Lula, who was in Spain at the end of April 2023, met with executives from large Spanish companies to encourage them to invest more in his country, explaining the tax reform that his government has implemented, aimed at eliminating bureaucratic obstacles to facilitate the arrival of foreign capital, and explaining a major infrastructure plan, for which Spanish companies can apply. In addition, the government wants Spain to become a destination for investment by Brazilian companies.
In Sánchez’s meetings with Lula da Silva in Brazil, it is almost certain that one of the issues to be discussed will be the ratification of the trade agreement between the European Union and Mercosur, an objective that Spain had set itself for the six-month European Presidency that ended on 31 December, but which could not become a reality due to the reluctance of some countries.
In the conversation between Sánchez and Lula, it is very likely that they will talk about how to get France to cease its refusal of an agreement, which was formed in 2019, after 20 years of negotiations. The goal is difficult to achieve, because France, as recently confirmed by its economy minister, Bruno Le Maire, considers that, if the agreement is not reformed, French livestock and agriculture will be harmed and, at the moment, President Emmanuel Macron cannot afford to take such a step when he has the country’s roads on fire with protests by Gallic farmers.
In any case, Sánchez will arrive in Brazil some 20 days before Macron, who is due to travel there around the 27th.
As for Chile, a country that the President of the Government already visited in 2018, during Sebastián Piñera’s term in office, the visit will be a return visit to Spain by Gabriel Boric in July last year.
Sánchez will arrive in Santiago in an election year in Chile (with municipal elections in June and general elections in October), after the failure of the two attempts to bring a new Constitution to life and after the new advanced framework agreement and the interim trade agreement between the European Union and the Andean country were signed during the Spanish Presidency of the EU. Boric’s government is grateful to the Spanish government for the efforts made to achieve this signature, which is the first of a new generation agreement between an Ibero-American nation and Brussels.
As in Brazil, the head of the Spanish Executive will be accompanied by Spanish businessmen, before some of whom Boric has already highlighted Chile’s potential in green energies, such as green hydrogen, lithium and copper.
